With only a few days in Hawaii, it would have been oh so easy to lie on Waikiki beach, with all the other posers, just topping up the tan, but we already had a short list of things that we wanted to see on Oahu, when making our original plans, so any months ago.

The morning started with a quick shop to ease the retail therapy withdrawal symptoms for K. Waikiki is a haven for high end shopping and K finds it interesting watching the young Japanese girls hitting 'Hermes' and ‘Prada’ with their big credit cards. Not to be totally out done, K managed to add the 3rd pair of sheepskin shoes to occupy the miniscule bit of free space in her bulging bag. Fortunately, she is slowly throwing out the well-worn backpacker summer clothes, knowing that in 5 days’ time we are in LA, and an even colder Lake Tahoe, so it isn’t too much of an issue

Oahu is actually only 44 miles by 30 miles, and with our super-fast toy, we thought that we could get around the island in a few hours. Of course we had forgotten that 75% of Hawaiians live on this island, so whilst getting around on the freeway is easy, the speeds only average 25mph to 45 mph.

One of the things we enjoy doing when we are away is visiting WW1 & WW2 historic memorial sites. Oahu has 4 different memorial sites as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on the 7th Dec 1941. This drew USA into the war and many naive US citizens actually believe that this was the start of WW2. We chose to tour the battleship USS Missouri, the last battleship to be built by the US. This big old lady served in WW2 and more recently in Desert Storm and her biggest claim to fame is being the site of the signing of Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945.

Americans are very patriot, and it was a privilege to stand and chat to the old retired service men who now are the volunteer guides showing tourists around the ship.